Bureaucratic Autonomy in the U.S. Separation of Powers: Evidence from Cabinet Departments

Theories of delegation posit that politicians have the incentive to decrease discretion when ideological conflict with an administrative agency increases. Yet agencies can use their expertise to appropriate informational benefits from delegation helping to increase bureaucratic autonomy. Such theories only indirectly address the impact of ideological conflict on bureaucrats’ perceptions about the extent of the discretion they are afforded on the job. Does the perception of discretion by bureaucrats depend on ideological conflicts between the legislative and executive branches? Statistical results from dynamic panel models provide evidence that that closer ideological alignment with the U.S. Congress than the president increases perceived discretion; that a negative relationship emerges between confirmation times and perceived discretion, but a small and opposite relationship exists among supervisory levels; that variance in the ideological portfolio of cabinet secretaries decreases perceived discretion overall, but has no effect on supervisory cadres; and that divergence between the goals and legal context of an agency and the president’s policy orientation are associated with lower perceived discretion.     

EMERGENCE AND PERSISTENCE OF INEFFICIENT STATES

We present a theory of the emergence and persistence of inefficient states based on patronage politics. The society consists of rich and poor. The rich are initially in power, but expect to transition to democracy, which will choose redistributive policies. Taxation requires the employment of bureaucrats. By choosing an inefficient state structure, the rich may be able to use patronage and capture democratic politics, so reducing the amount of redistribution in democracy. Moreover, the inefficient state creates its own constituency and tends to persist over time. Intuitively, an inefficient state structure creates more rents for bureaucrats than would an efficient one. When the poor come to power in democracy, they will reform the structure of the state to make it more efficient so that higher taxes can be collected at lower cost and with lower rents for bureaucrats. Anticipating this, when the society starts out with an inefficient organization of the state, bureaucrats support the rich, who set lower taxes but also provide rents to bureaucrats. We obtain that the rich–bureaucrats coalition may also expand the size of bureaucracy excessively so as to generate enough political support. The model shows that an equilibrium with an inefficient state is more likely to arise when there is greater income inequality, when bureaucratic rents take intermediate values, and when individuals are sufficiently forward‐looking.     

Implementing Meritocracy in Senior Public Administration: the Dilemma for Chilean Politicians

This article addresses the question of whether politicians are willing to overcome patronage by creating a merit-based recruitment and selection system of the senior civil servants with the purpose of making public administration more effective. To answer the question the paper analyses the Chilean administrative reform of 2003. It concludes that the reform created a hybrid system of appointment of top civil servants: one with elements of meritocracy but restricted to the members of the political coalition in power. Information came from 67 interviews to key actors, official documents, academic literature and the press.     

From Domination to Alliance: Shifting Strategies and Accumulation of Power by the Bureaucracy in Bangladesh

Traditionally, the bureaucrats on the Indian subcontinent were unaccustomed to perform under political supervision, and this mindset continued to affect their relationship with politicians in Bangladesh. In the early years of Bangladesh as an independent state, the bureaucracy came under pressure to operate under political supervision, but this phase did not last long. Subsequent phases of military rule reinstated the bureaucrats in their entrenched positions and strengthened their grip over the system. After the restoration of electoral democracy in 1991, the dominant role of bureaucrats continued, mainly due to the tendency to practice confrontational politics and disregard to the political institutions. The bureaucracy draws strength from its permanent stature, organization, expertise and experience in administering the country. Using the resources at their disposal, this institution has been able to exert considerable influence. A number of reforms have been introduced to enhance the accountability of the bureaucracy. The response has been the development of a symbiotic relationship between the politicians and bureaucrats. The bureaucracy has changed its stance from a dominating approach to one of alliance with other powerful groups in the system and continues to exercise power. This has resulted in increasing politicization of the bureaucracy which affects the performance of the critical components of the government.     

Anticipating or Accommodating to Public Concern? Risk Amplification and the Politics of Precaution Reexamined

Regulatory use of the precautionary principle (PP) tends to be broadly characterized either as a responsible approach for safeguarding against health and environmental risks in the face of scientific uncertainties, or as “state mismanagement” driven by undue political bias and public anxiety. However, the “anticipatory” basis upon which governments variably draw a political warrant for adopting precautionary measures often remains ambiguous. Particularly, questions arise concerning whether the PP is employed preemptively by political elites from the “top down,” or follows from more conventional democratic pressures exerted by citizens and other stakeholders from the “bottom up.” This article elucidates the role and impact of citizen involvement in the precautionary politics shaping policy discourse surrounding the U.K. government's “precautionary approach” to mobile telecommunications technology and health. A case study is presented that critically reexamines the basis upon which U.K. government action has been portrayed as an instance of anticipatory policy making. Findings demonstrate that the use of the PP should not be interpreted in the preemptive terms communicated by U.K. government officials alone, but also in relation to the wider social context of risk amplification and images of public concern formed adaptively in antagonistic precautionary discourse between citizens, politicians, industry, and the media, which surrounded cycles of government policy making. The article discusses the sociocultural conditions and political dynamics underpinning public influence on government anticipation and responsiveness exemplified in this case, and concludes with research and policy implications for how society subsequently comes to terms with the emergence and precautionary governance of new technologies under conflict.     

Accountability,Political Views,and Bureaucratic Behavior: A Theoretical Approach

This study has developed a theoretical framework to predict bureaucratic behaviors with career public officials’ political views (whether career public officials agree or disagree with their overhead political principals’ ideology) and bureaucratic accountability (accountability either to the overhead political principals or to the public sentiment) by adopting and extending Hirschman’s (1970) exit, voice, and loyalty model. Given the two conditions, this study has drawn four propositions of possible bureaucratic responses: loyalty; voice; exit; and silence. In addition, the stay scenario is discussed for passive bureaucrats regardless of the two dimensions. By incorporating relevant examples with the propositions, this study expects to contribute to a better understanding of bureaucratic behavior.     

中国电力企业对电力体制改革适应性的管理结构模型研究

中国电力市场化改革实施以来效果如何,是公众广为关注的问题.本文依据路径-目标理论,构建了电力企业对电力体制改革适应性的管理结构模型,通过问卷调查分析,运用PLS(Partial Least Squares)方法,从电力企业管理的微观角度,审视电力体制改革对发电、电网两种类型企业的影响以及电力体制改革中存在的问题.模型可靠性和有效性良好.结果表明,市场化改革的思路可以有效引导企业积极变革,企业管理总体上是健康的;电力体制改革应该增强系统性,增加透明度,稳定企业对改革的预期;发电企业和电网企业需要进一步适应市场化环境,提高发展战略等薄弱环节的管理水平.     

Globalization, State Formation, and Reinvention in Public Governance: Exploring the Linkages and Patterns in Southeast Asia

While the existing studies on globalization widely cover the realms of economy, politics, society, and culture, the discourse is hardly extended to the domain of public governance. Although there are studies on the globalization or cross-national convergence of contemporary neoliberal models of governance – that is, the New Public Management (NPM) model and its revisionist post-NPM alternatives – there is a relative lack of research on how the globalization phenomenon itself has been a major cause of the emergence of such a neoliberal public sector management. In explaining the main causes of these neoliberal reinventions, most scholars highlight issues like fiscal crisis, state failure, and public sector inefficiency. They rarely consider how the dominant actors of globalization may constitute a major force causing the recent neoliberal transformation of the state and market-led reinvention in state policies and management. This article explicates these linkages – between globalization, state formation, and public sector reform – with specific reference to Southeast Asia.     

Bureaucracy and Democracy: A Theoretical Analysis

This article addresses the relationship between bureaucracy and democracy, bureaucratic politics and democratic politics. Bureaucratic theories and politics are discussed, democratic theories and politics are analyzed, and the argument in favor of reconciling bureaucracy and democracy is analyzed with implications for democratic theory and public administration. Persistence of bureaucracy is stressed, deficiencies in democratic theory and practice are noted, and the importance of a functionally balanced and professionally competent bureaucracy is reminded for administration of sound governance in both developed and developing societies. It is hypocrisy to speak of functioning democracy without a balanced professional bureaucracy.     

Joined-Up Government for Welfare Administration Reform in Norway

One of the largest public sector reforms in Norway is the welfare administrative reform of 2005. The aims are to get passive beneficiaries back into work and to make the administration more user-friendly, holistic and efficient. The aims are to be achieved by increasing the administration’s capacity to address “wicked issues” by cutting across existing policy fields and administrative levels. This joined-up-government approach poses three main challenges: 1) to get a merged central government agency to work, 2) to establish constructive cooperation between the central and local authorities and 3) to coordinate front-line services with user-oriented employment and welfare offices. The article shows that increasing the capacity of government to cut across existing policy fields and handle transboundary wicked issues are still struggling to be implemented. Cooperation between sectors is however easier to achieve than cooperation between levels. The joined-up-government-approach also tends to make accountability relations more ambiguous.     

Conclusion: Can We Go Home? Roads Taken, Targets Met, and Lessons Learned on Governance and Organizational Eclecticism in the Public Arena

Organizational eclecticism has characterized much of policy and administrative choices in public governance in the last three decades. This concluding article addresses this phenomenon and argues that roads have been taken, targets have been met, and many lessons have been learned in organizing and managing public sector governance, as the articles in this Symposium demonstrate. In the process, experiments have been conducted, some with success, while others with failure, leading to a proliferation of eclectic choices, many unsuited for organizational effectiveness but beneficial to powerful interest groups and politicians, all at the expense of alternative organizational choices and broad-based public interests. Three broad theoretical models/periods are examined, the proliferation of public sector organizational eclecticism is analyzed, and options are suggested concerning alternative organizational choices, resulting in the question: can we go home now?     

The Politics of ‘Social Accountability’ in England and Germany: Democratic Control and Moral Imperatives

This article investigates how politicians in England and Germany approach social accountability during the introduction of markets in the national health care systems. It analyses the discourse among members of parliament during the law making process of the 2012 NHS Health Care Act in England and the 2011 Act for Financing of Statutory Health Insurance in Germany. Generally, the new social accountability reform agenda is attractive to policy makers as it foregrounds public engagement and bottom-up participation (Peters 2001). Social accountability refers to institutional practices that favour participatory and horizontal mechanisms that depart from traditional hierarchical Principal-Agent forms.     

Decentralized administration and citizen participation in community planning

The shift from politics to expertise changes the rules for exercising power, and alters the structure of previous power networks. As a result, the involvement in planning of people who are ill-equipped to deal with the presentation of issues in a technical framework tends to lag. The effort in planning, as in much of private and public activity, must be directed to balance the demands for ever-increasing central bureaucratic control, against the demands for increased concern for the unique requirements of local, specialized, interests.     

Limits of Knowledge and the Limited Importance of Trust

Perceived risk and related attitudes have been implicated as major factors in many of the difficult policy problems that face modern society (nuclear power, genetically modified food, etc). Experts often argue that no or very small risks are involved; people are still worried. Why? The standard answer is lack of trust. Data on trust and risk perception, however, point to only a weak relationship between the two (r approximately 0.3). It is suggested here that the reason for the surprisingly minor importance of trust is that people believe that there are clear limits to how much science and experts know. Results are presented from studies of risk perception of the public, experts, and politicians. Politicians and members of the public believe that there are many unknown effects of technology and such beliefs were strongly related to their perceived risk. Experts on nuclear waste, on the other hand, seemed to believe that little is unknown in their field of expertise. Regression analyses of risk perception showed the unknown‐effects factor to be a more important explanatory factor than trust for the public and politicians.     

When Engagement Meets Politics: Analysis of a Brazilian Public Institution

Perception of organizational politics (POP) is usually associated with counterproductive factors. The reason for this stigma is that generally when employees perceive self-interest actions or backstage manoeuvres, they identify obstacles to their careers. On the other hand, the concept work engagement represents physical, cognitive and emotional factors from its dimensions (vigor, dedication and absorption) that can connect employees to their jobs. This study aimed to investigate the relationship between the dimensions of work engagement and perceptions of organizational politics in a public institution. Data were collected from 847 employees of a public educational institution, followed by a hierarchical cluster analysis to characterize groups with high and low work engagement scores. Multiple linear regressions were performed for each cluster. It was found that in the low engagement group, the three constructs’ dimensions were negatively related to POP. In the high engagement group there was no negative relationship between those two concepts, but a positive association between dedication and perception of politics was found. The results show evidence that highly engaged civil servants do not identify politics as an obstacle to their career development. The study also suggests that POP level is high in public educational institutions.     

Administrative Reform Policy: The Challenges of Turning Symbols into Practice

Administrative reform policies are often characterized by a large number of reform symbols. While these are generally aimed at furthering the legitimacy of the political leadership, they can have the opposite effect and generate problems in implementing reform practice. This paper starts by discussing the theory of reform symbols and relates it to theories of instrumental, negotiation and cultural features of reforms. We illustrate this discussion by analyzing interview data collected among the central political and administrative elite in Norway. The analysis shows the relevance of reform symbols even in Norway, a country with a reluctant reform tradition and few incentives for reform. The respondents often perceived reform symbols as negative, something that creates problems for the political leadership in reconciling symbols with practice and leads it to engage in double-talk. Political and administrative leaders on different levels have differing attitudes towards administrative reform symbols, reflecting different roles and perspectives. The conclusion is that symbols are a main feature of administrative reform but also that reforms are not only symbols. Symbols matter, but turning symbols into practice is not an easy task to do.     

Voices and values: Linking values with participation in OR/MS in public policy making

It is now widely accepted that public policy development requires both an appreciation of public values and an ability to involve insights from local people. Operational research (OR) has made some contributions to public policy development, and there has been a call to use problem-structuring methods (PSM) in this environment. This growing need for greater use of OR/management science (MS) in policy making is due to its ability to work with insights that are sometimes hard to pin down. This paper presents some research about values and local people's voices in public policy making, which the authors believe present a challenge to OR/MS and to the use of PSM. The paper will describe a framework for understanding values and exploring insights into including local voices in policy making using PSMs. Key to the framework is in the emphasis on differences, rather than similarities, in value priorities. A case study in which local people as well as decisions makers and politicians were engaged in a process to decide the future of a local hospital will be described.     

Politics and Power within Multinational Corporations: Mainstream Studies,Emerging Critical Approaches and Suggestions for Future Research

Given the increased public interest in the use and misuse of power in multinationals in the aftermath of the financial crisis, it is notable that power relations in multinational corporations (MNCs) have not gained enhanced attention in the academic community. What is missing so far in the study of MNCs is a systematic examination of how power and politics within MNCs have been addressed in mainstream international business (IB) and sociological research studying the MNC. This paper starts by critically reviewing these two mainstream approaches in the study of MNCs as organizations and seeking to understand the shortcomings of former research. Next, it reviews new emergent critical perspectives, which the authors call socio‐political studies of MNCs, where power and politics are addressed not just more prominently, but also differently, from a more bottom‐up and actor‐centred perspective. After reviewing this emergent stream of research, the authors propose that future studies should take a more micro‐political perspective and focus in more detail on the micro‐foundations of power relations. In the concluding section, the authors show how future studies of MNCs can learn from both critical interactionist and discursive theories when analysing organizational politics and power relations. A framework is proposed for the study of micro‐level political game‐playing in MNCs, based on a three‐dimensional framework for organizational power (episodic, rules of the game and domination), and some key research questions for future studies are suggested.     

Financial Reforms of Statutory Bodies in Singapore: Control and Autonomy in a Centralized State

This article explores the major financial reforms of both government-funded and self-funded statutory bodies in Singapore over the last 7 years. The reforms have been based on two models of administrative reform: the business enterprise model and the bureaucratic efficiency model. In accordance with the business enterprise model, changes have been made to place statutory bodies on a more commercial footing, requiring them to adopt the financial and management practices found in business enterprises and, in doing so, to become more financially self-reliant. The autonomy expected to flow from these reforms has been circumscribed by the retention of key decision-making responsibilities and veto powers at the center of government. The reforms thus indicate ambivalence in the thinking of political and administrative leaders in relation to the management of statutory bodies, allowing them greater freedom as business-like enterprises, but still subjecting them to centrally imposed restrictions and directives.     

中国房地产限售政策对房价的影响研究——兼论限售和限购的政策组合效应

自2017年3月以来，中国多个城市相继出台了房地产限售政策。本文基于2017年1月至2018年5月的全国城市月度数据，针对限售政策分期出台的实际情况，构建更具适用性的多期双重差分模型（Multi-Stage Difference-in-Difference），分别从国家和城市层面实证分析了限售政策平抑房价的效果及其异质性。在此基础上，又对限售政策和限购政策的联合效应进行研究。研究结果表明：房地产限售政策能显著平抑房价且效果具有异质性。具体而言，在国家层面，限售政策对房价的平抑效果二手房强于新房、小户型强于中大户型；在城市层面，其平抑房价的效果一线城市强于二三线城市、中西部城市强于东部城市。此外，双限政策的联合效果优于单一限售政策。以上研究对进一步发掘限售政策的独特价值具有现实意义。